Nightmare Child

THREE MONTHS LATER

Today Mr. Culhane had a new diamond ring. In case you failed to note this fact, Mr. Culhane made it easy for you by rolling his pinkie finger back and forth and examining the ring the way a jeweler might.

Of course, if you did remark on it (and, by God, you'd better), he'd play coy and say, "Oh, it's nothing much. Just something my old football team gave me at the University Club last week when Hank…er…I mean the vice-president was in the city."

This disclaimer conveyed three important pieces of in-formation: 1) the "nothing much" told you that Mr. Culhane, though a millionaire many times over, still thought of himself as a self-effacing man of the people; 2) the "old football team" told you all over again that Mr. Culhane had been the star running back of the 1939 team at the U, the one that had gone to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl, and to the record books forever; 3) the "vice-president was in town" told you that Mr. Culhane knew the vice-president of the United States well enough to call him Hank…er…V. P..

He was fat, pink, bald, usually dressed in a black pin-striped suit that only a Mafioso could love, and an indefatigable user of Binaca breath spray. He was also two other things: 1) the Foster Dawson Agency's largest account; and 2) Jeff McCay's wife's uncle, which, in some people's cynical minds, came to explain how a mediocre account executive like Jeff McCay came to handle the Reddy Teddy Dog Food account, Reddy Teddy being the four-decades-old drawing of a cocker spaniel that appeared on every can of RT food and every RT TV commercial.

"Gosh, that's a great ring."

"Oh, it's nothing much."

"Nothing much? Hey," Jeff said, "as if I didn't know the circumstances surrounding it. You guys hear about the dinner at the University Club last week?"

In the formal conference room, replete with Eames chairs, a mahogany table as long as a basketball court, and Impressionist paintings by a nineteenth-century French artist whose name no one could pronounce-three men shook their heads.

"God, Mr. Culhane, you didn't get another award, did you?" Ken Miner said.

"How many does that make this year? Twenty? Thirty?" Bob Conroy wanted to know.

"Is it another one from that organization for crippled kids?" George Hart inquired.

Mr. Culhane shook his bald head and put on his after dinner-speaker smile. "You boys just insist on flattering an old man like me."

All four agency men laughed along with Mr. Culhane's usual protestation of modesty.

So Jeff, enthusiastic as a game-show host, walked the other guys through all the brownie points: the football team's 1939 triumphs (heard at every meeting), and calling the vice-president "Hank" (heard at every other meeting and usually alternated with Mr. Culhane's story about having a date with Jane Russell right after World War II, and "making Howard Hughes damned mad, let me tell you").

The social amenities out of the way, Mr. Culhane leaned forward, steepled his pudgy fingers, and said, "Now I want to see some goddamned good advertising from you boys."

Reddy Teddy Dog Food had a problem. Three years ago it had changed formulas, and, while it was nutritionally a better dog food than ever before, it stank. Dogs would point their wet, black noses at the food bowl and then back away slowly and inexorably, never to eat the stuff no matter how long their masters starved them.

Reddy Teddy went from number one in its category (meat-based, medium price range) to number three, which scared the hell out of everybody involved, Mr. Ray Culhane included.

A year ago, finally perceiving the situation correctly, Reddy Teddy chemists found a way to leap all the new nutritional benefits while going back to the old texture (the new stuff goopy in the way diarrhea was goopy) and the old smell.

So Reddy Teddy was in phase two, phase one having been a successful campaign that told consumers the old smell was back.

But now Mr. Culhane wanted the agency to be bolder. Where before they'd been merely informational (You remember the good old smell of Reddy Teddy? Well, it's back and nobody knows it better than your dog), now he wanted them to sell the sizzle, the goddamned, you know, magic.

Jeff, trembling slightly, rose and walked to the rear of the conference room where a draped easel stood.

"I know you don't like any preamble, Mr. Culhane, but if you don't mind, I'd like to pay my respects to our creative department in advance. They hunkered down for this one. They hunkered way down." One of Mr. Culhane's favorite phrases was "hunkered down," so Jeff used it whenever possible. (Over beers one night, wanting to impress Mr. Culhane-he never called him Ray-with how much he loved Mindy, Jeff had said, "When I met Mindy, I knew I'd have to hunker down to win her love, Mr. Culhane, hunker way down," a piece of ass-kissing that had left him vaguely disgusted with himself for months after.)

"Just show me the advertising, son, and cut the bullshit."

Flushing, not liking to be berated in front of the rest of the team, Jeff said, "Yessir."

And whipped back the covering to reveal a brand-new print ad on which three brand-new TV commercials had been based.

Jeff read the theme line: "Reddy Teddy. With the smell and taste of charcoal-broiled steak."

What ensued then was what always ensued when you pitched a client. You sat and studied his face as he thought it over. If it twitched, was that a bad sign? If he cleared his throat, was that a good sign? Once they'd even had a client pass gas, and God only knew what that had meant.

Five minutes later Mr. Culhane said, "I'll tell you one thing, boys. It sure doesn't give me the chills. I guess I expected a lot better campaign than this."

Eleven months before, Diane Purcell wouldn't have been able to tell you the difference between an annual and a perennial. Tending soil, preparing plant beds, spacing seedlings properly, fertilizing-none of this had ever appealed to the forty-one-year-old schoolteacher until her husband, Charlie, had died so suddenly of a heart attack.

Now-having quit her job because of all the insurance money and because she vaguely had the idea of writing a book along the lines of the Victoria Holt novels she loved so much-her daily reality was her garden.

Wearing one of Charlie's blue work shirts and a faded pair of her own jeans, Diane worked in the garden, tending her nasturtiums and marigolds. The autumn wind coming down the hill was melancholy with the smells of smoke and sunlight. Here it was, already the first week of November, and the temperature remained at sixty-seven. The Midwest was rarely this warm.

Knees tired, Diane rose, dabbing at her face with her forearm, her rubber-gloved hand full with a trowel. A slender woman with dark hair usually worn in a soft chignon, Diane's blue-eyed face had clarity that some mistook for beauty. But she had long known better.

The slight hill her house sat on gave her the opportunity to look around the rest of Stoneridge Estates, seventeen expensive homes set against the backdrop of a massive forest. She particularly admired the way everybody had insisted on different styles for their homes, helping to avoid the look of a development. On her block, a U-shaped dead end, you found a Georgian next to a French Normandy-style farmhouse next to a sprawling, two-level ranch. Her own home was a country style with a dramatic two-story foyer, a formal living room with a marble fireplace, whitewashed oak floors, extensive wood moldings, and French doors. There was even a sumptuous master bath with a vaulted ceiling, skylights, and a sunken whirlpool tub, with planter boxes on the surrounding deck.

Their dream home, it had been. Both having come from relatively wealthy families, and Charlie being a most handsomely rewarded general surgeon, the Purcell's had spent the last six years there as blissful as any couple could be. Not even the fact that Diane was unable to bear children troubled them unduly. They had each other and that was more than enough.

Some nights now were unendurable, memories too vivid, lonely-ache too raw. She was beyond tears, into something far more vast and terrifying. A shrink had been suggested, and while she'd tried one twice, the sessions had yielded nothing but a certain embarrassing self-consciousness. Diane had always been a very private person.

She was just about to drop to her knees once more and resume working with the trowel when the caw of a silken blackbird caught her attention and she looked up the timbered, sloping hill behind her where sunlight dappled the brown grass of a clearing.

A young girl stood in the clearing, obviously staring at Diane.

Diane's first reaction was to reject what her eye told her was true. It could not be. Impossible.

Her second reaction was to whisper to herself, "My God, I don't believe it."

In the clearing stood nine-year-old Jenny, the next-door neighbor girl who had this past summer been kidnapped and presumably killed. Diane had always been enormously fond of the girl, perhaps even thinking of her subconsciously as a substitute for the daughter she could never have.

Dropping her trowel, putting out her arms, Diane started running up the hill, laughing and crying at the same time.

As she drew closer, she shouted, "It is you, Jenny! It is you! You're home!"

Mindy had not always been fat. She dated her obesity from the day she'd lost her first and only pregnancy to a miscarriage. In dreams, nightmares really, Mindy still spoke to the shadowy little girl who'd come to nothing but a bloody puddle. From then on, she'd eaten with an almost psychotic hunger.

Attempting to sate that hunger, she presently did jumping jacks on the sunny redwood deck in the rear of her opulent Mediterranean-style white-brick home, just west of the landscaped courtyard.

As the disco music pounded from the small Sony recorder, as the sweat inside her pink jogging suit with the black piping began to have the viscous texture of oil, she opened her eyes to see if there were any bunnies on the hill behind their place.

It was then that she saw the girl.

Doing a double take that Abbott and Costello would have been proud of, Mindy's stare became a glare and she stalked so abruptly to the edge of the deck that she stumbled over the tape recorder. So angry and frightened was she, that she drop-kicked the tape-player clear over the edge of the deck, into an orange swirl of autumn flowers.

It could not be.

No way.

But it was.

Fleeing inside, slamming into the sliding-glass door that led to the deck, Mindy began to hyperventilate. Within two more steps her nose began to bleed.

"Oh, God," she said, recalling what Dr. Moeller, the psychotherapist, had told her to do.

Stretching herself out on the oak floor of the living room, she was at once attacked by her golden toy poodle, Ringo.

Liking blood, the dog began to lap at her nose, his quick pink tongue sandpaper-rough on her face.

"Oh, please Ringo. I don't need any more grief," she said, trying to push the dog away.

But even this much movement caused her nose to spurt more red blood, so that all she could do was back-down, and let Ringo have at her.

"She's alive," Mindy said miserably. "We killed her, we buried her two hundred miles from here, but she's alive. Do you hear that, Ringo? She's alive!"

Ringo just continued to yip and lick her face.

Once Jenny was in her arms, Diane knelt next to the small girl for a closer look at her. Dirt darkened Jenny's face and smudged her white blouse, jeans, and Reeboks. Her blond hair was a bird's nest of tiny leaves. She looked as if she'd been traveling for days. But kneeling there in the clearing, the sun warm on her back, Diane was far more disturbed by Jenny's eyes, a blank blue that suggested shock.

"Where did you come from, Jenny?"

Jenny's gaze registered understanding but she said nothing, just stared at Diane.

"Why don't we go tell Mindy you're home? Do you know how happy she'll be?"

Diane rose and took Jenny's fragile hand, starting to lead her toward the McCay property.

Jenny's grip suddenly became iron. She jerked on Diane's hand, pulling Diane back.

"You don't want to go home? You don't want to see your sister?" Diane asked.

With the severe blue gaze unchanged, Jenny shook her head.

"Where do you want to go, then?" Diane said, her glee having turned abruptly to a curious exasperation.

With her free hand, Jenny pointed to the house: Diane's house.

"Do you have any idea how many people were looking for you? The TV stations estimated that more than one thousand people joined the search one Saturday. And that wasn't counting the police and the State Patrol and the State Bureau of Investigation." Diane said all this as they stood in the bathroom. She washed Jenny's face and hands with a soft pink washcloth soaked in warm, soapy water. "They searched parks and farmland and the clay hills to the north and they put your picture in all the supermarkets and sports arenas and department stores. And once a night, there was an update about you." Diane frowned. "I hate to say this, Jenny, but everybody started believing that you were dead. They just assumed that your kidnappers had gotten scared and murdered you."

As she finished washing off the girl's face, Diane noticed again how ominously silent the girl was. She listened to every word. You could see that by the way her expression changed as she listened. But she never spoke. Diane had the unnerving sensation that the girl wasn't human at all, but rather some life-size doll.

Drying her off, Diane said, "Now, why don't I take you over to see your sister?"

Anger shined in Jenny's gaze as she shook her head. "But, Jenny, why don't you want to go home?" Exasperation tightened her voice once more.

Jenny shook her head for a second time, then, seeming about to cry, ran out of the bathroom.

It took twenty minutes to find her. As a younger girl, Jenny had often come over to Diane's and played hide-and-seek, her favorite game. This time she hid in a cedar chest in Charlie's old office.

When Diane opened the trunk, she had the terrifying feeling that Jenny had died. She lay so still, hands folded across her chest, eyes closed tight, that that was the impression she gave.

Diane decided not to mention Mindy for a while. "You must be starving."

Getting out of the cedar chest, Jenny nodded.

"How about a turkey sandwich on rye and some potato chips on the side?"

Jenny nodded again.

"Whatever happened to that talkative little girl I used to know, anyway?" Diane said on the way downstairs to the kitchen.

Jenny ate two turkey sandwiches, a healthy wedge of cheesecake, a half-cup of spinach, and drank two glasses of milk.

They sat in the sun-splashed kitchen. Two tomcats sat across from them, watching.

"Autumn's my favorite time," Diane said. She realized she was chattering. It was her way of compensating for the fact that Jenny said nothing at all. "When I was your age, I liked to walk through the woods and smell leaves burning. It was the most exotic aroma I'd ever smelled. And I loved Halloween. I loved to dress up like a ghost and jump out from behind trees and scare my big brother, who always liked to pretend he was so brave."

As if to comment on her reverie, one of the cats yawned.

She stopped herself and looked across the butcher-block table at Jenny. "I wish you'd talk, hon. Are you afraid to talk?"

Jenny stared at her.

"Did they tell you they'd hurt you if you tried to talk?" Jenny shook her head.

"Do you know what happened to your kidnappers?" Jenny went back to staring.

Diane dropped her gaze. Sighed. "Maybe I'd better go call Mindy now."

A snake could not have moved faster than Jenny's hand. It clamped onto Diane's wrist, hurting her. It was obvious she did not intend to let go.

"Jenny," Diane said through her pain, "why don't you want me to call your sister?" Then: "Please, Jenny, you're hurting me."

Jenny let go at once.

Rubbing her wrist, letting the worst of the pain dissipate up the length of her arm, she said, "Then will you let me call a friend of mine, Jenny? He's a policeman. Chief Clark. Do you remember him?"

Jenny nodded.

"Is it all right if I call him?"

Jenny took a full minute thinking it over.

Finally, a wisp of a sigh escaping her small mouth, she tilted her head forward, meaning yes.

It was known as the Hubba-Hubba Room. Located in the dusty, shadowy basement of the Foster Dawson Agency, the ten-by-ten room was furnished in Salvation Army modern, equipped with a small wet bar and, most important, it could be used only by the four executives who had keys to it. In the era of liberation; this meant one female and three male vice-presidents. The room was used for "quickies," as the executives were prone to call them.

This afternoon, the Hubba-Hubba was being put to struggling use by Jeff McCay and a most appealing young woman named Brenda Kohl, who was an assistant art director and had been Jeff's lover for the past seven months. Red of hair, green of eyes, sumptuous of body, Brenda could most often be found straddled on top of Jeff in the overstuffed chair. As now.

"Oh-oh-oh," she said, tossing her head back, closing her in eyes in what Jeff took to be ecstasy.

"Oh-oh-oh," Jeff said right back, closing his own eyes in what he took to be ecstasy.

Finished a few minutes later, the skirt of her fashionable gray Jaeger suit pulled into place with fierce modesty, she said, as she always said, "Did you get a chance to talk to Barney yet?"

Now they were seated sensibly across from each other. She held a Coca-Cola, he a Diet Pepsi.

He smiled. "I'm sorry, babe."

"God, you did it again."

"Oh, I'm sorry. 'Babe,' you mean?"

"Yes. I hate that."

"I'm sorry."

"And stop apologizing. It's so…unmanly."

Jeff McCay had long had this dream of having an uncomplicated relationship with a woman. Other men, over drinks, always told him about their uncomplicated relationships with women. But somehow it never happened for Jeff. Certainly not with Mindy, who could be like living with an entire psychiatric ward all at once. And certainly not with the ten-or was it twelve? — women at Foster Dawson with whom he'd had "things" over the past four years. A little hot, quick, garter-snapping sex; that was all he asked for. But it quickly became so much more, sunk in that morass of failed expectation and enmity. Take gorgeous Brenda, here. She was one of those women who seemed basically to hate men. But, knowing it was men who more than not still dominated the business world, she was not in the least averse to sleeping with one of them now and then to get what she wanted.

And what she wanted was simple enough in agency terms: a full art directorship with all the commensurate salary increases, the real and imagined perks, and the real and imagined prestige that went with such a position.

In the beginning, part of his seduction scheme, Jeff had hinted (but was careful not to promise) that he would talk to Barney Graves, the Chief Art Director, and put in several million good words for Brenda. But all along, Jeff knew that he would not do this because he kept his own job only because the agency's largest client was his uncle-in-law. He was resented enough already; if he started getting his girlfriends promotions, he would be in dangerous waters indeed.

The second problem was that he was in love with Brenda and did not want her to get the promotion because once she did, she'd say good-bye for sure. In love. He thought about that as he stared across at her perfect white legs and her perfect white posture and her perfect tumbling red hair. God, he did love her; she could destroy him he loved her so much, and that made him feel both wonderful and terrible-wonderful because she made him feel so good, and terrible because he knew, deep down, that she'd dump him without a care and he would be maimed in some spiritual way forever.

"I checked his calendar," Brenda said.

"Oh?"

"Yes. He's free for lunch tomorrow."

"Oh-you mean Barney and-"

"Barney and you."

"Oh."

"Why do you keep saying `oh'? It's almost as annoying as your saying 'babe.'"

"I'm sorry."

"God. There you go again."

Each time now, her distaste for him was more apparent. He wanted to have some kind of personality transplant-Why not? They were transplanting everything else these days-and emerge from surgery as just the kind of non-annoying man Brenda Kohl liked.

"I'll talk to him."

"When, Jeff?"

"Tomorrow."

"How about today?"

"If I get a chance."

"You're that busy?"

"I'm afraid I am."

"I'm tired of your lies, Jeff."

Hearing her harsh words, seeing the anger in her green gaze, he thought again of how other men, particularly in bars, spoke and felt about women: as breasts, as bottoms, as legs and as laughs. Leave it to Jeff McCay to fall in love with a woman who essentially hated him.

"Why can't we be the way we used to be?" he said.

"We didn't use to be any way but the way we are right now, Jeff-me pleading, you evading."

"Who's evasive when the subject of love comes up?"

"Oh, God, Jeff, not 'love' again! I'm twenty-four years old and I've slept with four men in my life and one of them could barely get it up-what do I know about love?"

In that whining tone of his that he despised so much, he leaned forward, palms sweating, head pounding, cheeks ablaze with shame, and said, "You know how much I love you, Brenda. Doesn't that mean anything?"

"I used to think it would mean an art directorship. To be frank, I mean."

"Well, that's a fine thing to say, Brenda. That's a fine thing."

She indicated the small room with a regal turn of her slender white wrist. "Jeff, I almost feel sorry for you. This is the Hubba-Hubba Room. This is where people come to use each other-for sex or for promotions or for a way of alleviating boredom. But nobody, Jeff, nobody falls in love in the Hubba-Hubba Room. Can't you understand that, Jeff? Can't you?"

He was about to yield to her, collapse inside and make a bitter promise (which he intended to keep) to go up-stairs and talk to Barney right then, when something that almost never happened in the Hubba-Hubba Room happened.

Behind the bar was a battered old black phone, the type Humphrey Bogart used to speak into when he was playing Sam Spade. It almost never rang (the Hubba-Hubba Room was supposed to be for uninterrupted pleasure), but now it rang as shrilly as the scream of a dying person.

Brenda said, a touch sardonically, "It won't be for me. Assistant art directors aren't that important."

He flew to the phone and snatched up the receiver. "God, I'm so glad I got you. You've got to get home immediately."

Mindy.

Glancing over his shoulder at Brenda, who was studying her perfect red-painted nails, he said, "How did you know this number?"

"Your receptionist gave it to me. She didn't want to, the bitch, but then when I reminded her about my uncle- what's her name, anyway?"

"Who?"

"Your receptionist?"

"Sandra."

"She sounds like a Sandra."

"How does a 'Sandra' sound?"

"Snotty. Bitchy. I'm going to ask Uncle Ray to have her fired." Mindy was not bluffing. Mindy never bluffed. Mindy had gotten any number of people at the Foster Dawson Agency fired. "But right now you've got to get home."

"Why?"

"Because I saw something."

"What did you see?"

Behind him, Brenda stood up and waved. He wanted to lunge at her, hold her from leaving and shout I love you! until she confessed her love for him back.

Brenda left.

"Jeff? Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"Why do you sound so surly all of a sudden?"

"Mindy, I'm just buried in work and I really don't have time to-"

"She's back."

"Who's back?"

"Who do you think?"

Still irritated and forlorn over Brenda's quick exit, he said, "I don't have time for guessing games."

"I had to take three Valiums. That's the only reason I'm calm. But I started hyperventilating so I got a nosebleed."

"Please try to make sense here, Mindy. Please."

"She's back. Jenny. Jenny's home."

"Oh, Mindy. Mindy. Please call Dr. Moeller and make an appointment and-"

"She's right next door. At Diane Purcell's home. And about five minutes ago a police car pulled into the drive."

"What are you talking about, Mindy? Jenny can't be home. We-" He thought of tapped phones. Given all the palace politics of advertising, you couldn't ever be sure. "You know why that's impossible."

"It may be impossible, but it's true."

"But-"

"You get in your fancy-schmancy sports car that I bought for you and you get your buns home. Fast. Do you understand?"

"But-"

"Do you understand, Jeff? Right now."

Mindy hung up.

He looked miserably about him and thought of Brenda's ironic words. How only he, Jeff McCay, would be stupid enough to give his heart away in the Hubba-Hubba Room.

Forty-two-year-old Robert Clark had had three dates with Diane Purcell. While none were especially a disaster, neither were they memorable. Clark, a tall, shaggy, dark-haired man who frequently made jokes about being the "Chief" of a police department consisting of six officers and three cars, had hoped that he would get somewhere with this most attractive widow. At his age, he'd had enough "relationships." A Vietnam veteran who'd kicked around the world for several years following his hitch, Clark was ready for marriage. Perhaps too ready. He secretly felt that his over eagerness had terrified Diane and driven her away.

At the time Diane's call came in telling him that Jenny had just sauntered into sight in her backyard, Clark was listening to a pitch from the local Plymouth dealer who felt it highly unfair that the last two times the department had purchased cars it had gone to Ford. Not only was a Chrysler product better than a Ford product, but it offered more features for fewer dollars.

"All right, Mike," Clark said toying with the pipe he rarely smoked. He shrugged at the Plymouth dealer. "Prove it to me."

"Huh?"

"Take all the things I'll get in a new Ford Fairlane and put them in one column, and then take all the things I'm going to get from your Plymouth at the same price." The Plymouth dealer glowered.

"You said you could prove it, Mike. What's wrong with making out a comparative list?"

Which was when the phone call came through from Diane.

The Plymouth dealer, seeing immediately that Clark was going to be distracted for the third or fourth time during this presentation, stood up, waved good-bye, and exited the knotty-pine office, making no promise at all that he'd get back to the Chief with that list of comparisons.

As he pulled up on the gravel crest of the hill overlooking the Stoneridge Estates, Clark saw again how beautiful this region of the Midwest could be, especially with the trees run riot and a soft blue haze over everything. In the distance a chestnut mare ran along the grassy edge of a hill. Directly below, entering the Estates through the black iron gates, a tan Volvo passed a blue brook as a red cardinal soared above a golden collie.

The Estates spoke of a peace and comfort Clark had never known but now wanted to know quite badly.

Five minutes later, wheeling the white police vehicle into Diane's drive, Clark grabbed the two-way and told Ben Hibbs, the young officer catching squawks, that he would probably be at Diane's for at least a half-hour.

Walking up the drive, he noticed he was shaking. Nothing major, but shaking nonetheless. Diane had meant more to him than he'd cared to admit until this very moment.

Diane answered on the first ring. Even in faded work clothes, she radiated a gentle appeal.

"Come on in," she said. "I fixed some chocolate. With marshmallows, if I remember correctly?"

He smiled. "I'm flattered."

She laughed. "With the social life I have, it's not too difficult to remember things like that."

"Still a hermit?" he said as they passed through the cool, late-afternoon shadows collecting in the step-down living room.

"Afraid so," Diane said, leading him into the kitchen. Clark's first glance at Jenny told him that here was a seriously disturbed youngster.

It wasn't just the scruffy condition of her clothes, nor the fact that she looked pale and exhausted. No, it was more the blankness of her gaze. There was something… inhuman about it.

"Jenny, this is Chief Clark."

"Hi, Jenny," Clark said, breaking into a social smile. "We've been looking for you every day for the past three months."

At the worktable, pouring two cups of hot chocolate, Diane said, "I told her all about the search parties." She glanced at Clark. "I hope she was impressed." She paused. "The truth is Jenny hasn't said much since getting here." Pause. "In fact, Jenny hasn't said anything."

When she turned around and brought over the chocolate, Clark could see how concerned Diane looked.

The chocolate served, Diane went over and stood next to the girl, taking one tiny hand in her own.

"Jenny, are you afraid?"

Nothing. Just the stare.

"Jenny, do you remember me?"

The same stare.

"Jenny, do you know that I'm your friend?"

Nothing.

Diane turned back to Clark. "Do you see what I mean?"

Clark nodded. "Has she seen her sister yet?"

"That's the odd thing. She won't. Every time I try to take her over there, she grabs my wrist and stops me." She rubbed her wrist. "She's a very strong little girl."

Clark walked over to Jenny. "Do you feel all right, Jenny?"

Once more, the stare.

"Would you like us to get you a doctor?"

No response.

"Are you afraid of your sister, Jenny?"

Nothing.

Setting down his chocolate, Clark said, "Why don't we walk out on the deck, Diane? I'm sure Jenny will be all right here for a while."

Diane nodded. She looked at Jenny. "Will you be all right, hon?"

But of course Jenny did not let on that she'd heard a word.

"God only knows what they did to her."

"The kidnappers?"

"Right."

Diane shuddered. "I don't even like to think about it."

They leaned on the deck, gazing up the hill at the scrub pine and the clear blue sky. Distantly, a train rumbled through the hills. Closer by, a blackbird cawed.

"I just wonder why Jenny acted so funny about Mindy."

"Makes me curious too." He leaned on his elbows and watched a hawk soar in a wide loop toward the sun.

"You've got a nice place to relax here, Diane." He smiled fondly. "You should try it sometime-relaxing, I mean."

"I'm afraid I've never been any good at that. I suppose that's why I was always so drawn to Jenny. She reminded me of myself at her age. There's always been an urgency about her. I suppose it's because of Mindy."

"What about Mindy?"

"Mindy's so…self-involved. I don't mean that critically, just as an observation. Her weight, her hair, her social calendar. There just hasn't ever been much time for poor little Jenny. And Mindy's had her for four years, ever since their parents were killed in a private-plane crash."

Clark shrugged. "Maybe that's why Jenny doesn't want to go back there. Maybe for right now she needs the warmth and reassurance of somebody who really cares about her."

Diane studied the hills. "I wonder where she's been all this time."

"Maybe she just escaped a while ago."

"She looks so…pale."

"It isn't her coloring that bothers me."

"No?"

"No. It's her eyes. At first I thought we might be dealing with a very severe case of traumatic shock. But now I don't know. I've never seen eyes quite like hers."

"Neither have I."

"It's like she's-" He shook his head, not wanting to say it.

"Like she's what?"

"You know, Diane. You know what I want to say."

"Not quite…conscious. Is that it?"

"Something like that."

"That's impossible, of course. But she does-" Diane paused. "She does give that impression, doesn't she?"

"I think you should call Dr. Moeller."

"I was wondering about that."

"I've worked with him a couple of times. As shrinks go, he's a pretty sensible guy."

She smiled. "Is that an anti-shrink attitude I detect?"

He smiled back. "I suppose so. I'm not real fond of the way they always try to excuse everything by bringing in somebody's past. And I don't like the way they try to complicate everything with all these theories. Moeller's pretty straight ahead."

They moved away from the edge of the deck, brushing up against each other as they did so.

"Sorry," Diane said.

"I enjoyed it," he said. Then he snapped his fingers. "There I go again."

"There you go again?"

"Right. Being pushy." He sighed. "I guess I may as well say it. I think I frightened you away a few months ago-by coming on too strong. I think that's why you suddenly stopped seeing me."

She laughed softly. "You'd make a good shrink, Robert."

"I would?"

"Sure. You're doing the same thing you accuse them of doing."

"I am?"

She nodded. "You're making things more complicated than they need to be."

"Oh."

"I quit seeing you because I was…afraid. I liked you more than I was ready to like you, if that makes any sense. I just needed…time alone, I guess."

"I'm glad you told me that. Maybe sometime I'll ask you out again."

"I'd like that." She paused. "Sometime." She pointed to the shadowy interior of the house. "Let's go in and see how my new houseguest is doing."

They were ten steps into the kitchen when Clark saw that the stool Jenny had been sitting on was empty.

Diane ran through the house, to the front door. "There she is!" she called to Clark.

"Where?" Clark said, running to meet Diane. "She's going across the lawn. To Mindy's house."

As Clark came abreast of Diane, he said, "Well, maybe she worked through whatever difficulty she was having. Maybe she understands that it's a good thing to go home after all."

But Diane's eyes clouded with worry as she watched the retreating figure of the frail blond girl. "I hope that's why she's going back," Diane said. "I hope that's why."

Ordinarily, Mindy did not drink liquor. Sophomore year in college she'd gone on a kegger with some other Tri-Delts and ended up, near midnight, lying alone on the edge of a sandpit, nude and covered with chigger bites. She had never found out what she'd done-or what had been done to her-but whatever it was she blamed it all on drink.

Today, seeing Jenny coming across the lawn, she got down a fifth of Old Grand-dad from the kitchen cupboard, poured herself a shaky finger-full in a wineglass, and slugged it back.

"Oh, God," she said to no one in particular. "I know I'm going to hyperventilate and get a nosebleed. I know it."

Just then the doorbell rang an explosion of chimes on the sullen, silent air.

Jenny. Her younger sister. The girl she'd killed-or thought she'd killed-months ago. At the front door.

She had one more equally shaky drink, this one causing her to cough, and then she walked to the front door with as much dignity and purpose as she could summon.

Peeking through the spy-hole, she peered down on the familiar form of her sister, Jenny.

Mindy made a squealing noise when she saw the shades, those hideous red heart-shaped sunglasses little Jenny had always been so inexplicably fond of, the sunglasses that made her look like a midget version of a movie goddess.

Mindy, throwing the door open, dropped to one knee and said, "Come here, Kitten! Come here!"

Mindy held her arms out for Kitten, urging Jenny to run into her embrace.

Only that was not what happened.

Jenny took one step over the threshold and then did something most surprising for a girl her age and size.

She reached out and clawed her right hand down the side of Mindy's neck. Deep, dark blood appeared in long, ragged rivulets.

Mindy screamed.

Jenny had come home.

During this time, only a cleaning woman named Iona caught even so much as a glimpse of Jenny. One day when Iona was cleaning the bathroom in a master bedroom (you'd think a forty-nine-year-old man would learn to flush, for God's sake), she glanced outside and there in the window of the house next door was little Jenny, austere in her KISS T-shirt and almost ominous in those red, heart-shaped sunglasses she'd worn the past three Summers.

Jenny and the McCays were the one ceaseless topic of conversation in Stoneridge, their situation being even far more fun to speculate on than who was sleeping with whom in Parish Heights, the closed enclave estates twenty miles north, where the people were younger and more daring.

One thing everybody took note of, were the curtains in the McCay house.

They had not been opened once since the day Jenny had returned.